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I cannot maintain my silence any longer. As someone who has been working behind the scenes at Rock, Paper, Shotgun since it launched, and seen what’s really been going on here, I have to reveal the truth of this company. How am I supposed to sit back and watch as the website is adulated across the internet, bestowed with numerous awards for the supposed success of its “four main writers”, and celebrated as the site that invented good games journalism. I have recently found out I’m to be dismissed in the next round of lay-offs at RPS, as the company once again fires the “little people” who actually run the site, while the ego of the Big Four grows. So I’ve started this blog, and I’m using the login details I’ve got for RPS until they figure out how to stop me. Like those idiots ever could.

Working for Rock, Paper, Shotgun basically means pretending you don’t exist, and giving the credit for all your work to Jim, Alec, John or Quintin. Their names go at the top of the posts, their names go on the comments below, their names go on the awards after. Anyone who speaks up, who suggests that more credit should go to the actual authors, is very quickly out of work.

So if you want to know what really goes on at RPS, I’ll tell you right now.

First, the Big Four don’t know what they’re doing. Quintin Smith is the cruellest man I’ve ever encountered. All he does is sit in his palatial London apartment, sucking up to the right people. You want to know how he got the job on RPS? It wasn’t because of his writing talent. Let’s just say that with enough money, and enough dirt on the right people, it’s very easy to get a position on the RPS board. He’s never written a single word of copy in his entire career, and instantly fits right in to the “team”.

Alec Meer used to be the decent one. When the company started, he was the one who would talk to the staff writers, the art production teams, and so on. He didn’t actually do anything, of course, but would at least be courteous to those who did. That all changed with time. Now he’s rarely to be seen outside of his offices. No one knows what he does in there, but the stories of screams and crying animals are rife.

John Walker – “The Funny One” as they so hilariously call him – is the biggest arsehole of them all. By far the least funny person I’ve ever encountered, his lack of a sense of humour leads to his misunderstanding anything anyone says to him. The endless rages are legendary in the office, inevitably because he doesn’t get a joke on the site, and starts screaming the place down. I could tell you about the out-of-court settlement that prevented one of his victims bringing to light the incident with the chair. Maybe another time. But let’s just say that he’s got enough money to make sure people don’t need to hear about his violent tendencies.

And as for Jim Rossignol, who thinks he’s the boss of the whole enterprise. It’s pretty sad really. The delusional old man sits in his luxury country cottage, banging away on a keyboard that’s not plugged into anything, while barking orders at his staff to build him ever-more improbable robots. You should see what they have to do, dressing up in tin foil-wrapped cardboard to appease his insane ranting, as he picks up and slams down a disconnected phone. It’s hard to hate such a tragic figure. But it’s also pretty hard to see him receive credit for the book he pretends he wrote.

Want to know more? Keep reading. I can keep ranting.

You’re probably wondering about Kieron Gillen, and the coup that led to his getting fired. Oh, he left voluntarily you say? No, he was fired. The other four, with Quintin the “brains” of the operation, plotted to get rid of him so they could split his salary between them. Quintin saw an opportunity to replace Kieron in the Big Four, and within a couple of months KG was gone and “Quinns” (as he likes to pretend we want to call him) settled in to his position and salary. I bet Quintin is enjoying the sweet new chicken and ham pie he bought after leaving the knife in the man who mentored him.

Kieron was no saint. Promoted far beyond his ability he had to rely on so many underlings to get anything done. And the sycophancy of Jim, John and Alec. It wasn’t until Quintin joined the team that any of them had the guts to try to launch the coup, and blame Kieron for all of RPS’s many failings. Sure, their audience figures may be climbing all the time, but what you’ve got to wonder is where that audience is coming from. There’s only so much money that can come in from all their shady deals with various publishers to pay for those South Korean sweatshops to keep refreshing the front page. Or keep clicking on Alec’s features, as he insists they do.

And what do they all have in common? All of them have barely written a word on the site. The content is generated by faceless drones, trawling the net for stories to copy off of Kotaku, inevitably bawled out by John or Quintin for whatever the write, no matter how many hits it may get. Don’t get enough hits, and you’re gone. Oh, and repeat a post that someone else has already posted, even months ago, and the bollocking you receive is never forgotten.

And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of their Captcha system. They boast about how effective it is, its ease of use, and how it’s changed the site for the better. They spent $300m on it. It’s the only thing the four of them have done on the site in at least a year.

when I think back to what you said about the stones growing in my body, all I can say is that I am now in deep regrets about how all this ended. But I am willing to see it now for what it is, I will go to this place and it will be my Damascus. Maybe then you… or I… will be able to forgive me.

I don’t really understand satire very well, so could someone explain to me why this incident was parodied at RPS? Yeah, EA Louse doesn’t bring forth a lot of arguments to support his position in his rant, but he does tell us what some of us have known or suspected about the inner workings of these big, publisher-lead companies.

This man got laid off, while the managers just keep getting raises and bonuses. And this man has seen the inside workings and knows that the managers are incompetent. This isn’t a joke to laugh at. This is more widespread in the industry than many suspect. So why does this RPS Parody seem like it’s mocking the whole situation?

It’s not. It’s a warning. Because RPS is an industry leading….ummmm publisher? This is phase one to introduce captcha as a DRM mechanism in games. Yes soon you will be entering captcha when you start a game. KG’s idea. I called it!

I think most people is somewhat angry about these “exposé” because of the style. Whatever is the position of the authors, exposing a real problem, create trouble, the way that was deliver was a big NO, NO. Game dev profesional already have enough crap to deal with, to add vengeful coworkers destroying reputations.

I am angry at these blog articles, because of the uncivilized style.

Adding to that, seems the RPS people think that the icefrog one is fake. The other one is soo light on information and is soo opinionative (is this a word) that is pretty ignorable. This two “expose” make all expose looks bad.

Making a bunch of unsupported claims is not “telling” us anything, it’s spouting bullshit. It only starts being “telling us what we already knew” when there’s actual proof that the claims have any kind of evidence backing them up.

It’s shocking how easy it is to get ranked upon by disgruntled coworkers these days. I don’t own a small business myself and am busily testing the unfriendly waters of unemployment while living it up in my mom’s basement, but nonetheless it seems I am not immune.

The other day I came down to “the dungeon,” as we like to call it, and discovered a number of tiny placards with very unflattering things written on it about my grueling work conditions and cruel docking of pay. After a prolonged investigation involving overturning countless stacks of my vintage comic books and games, I discovered a thriving cockroach colony which was up in arms about my decision to clean up last month’s pizza detritus. Literally up in arms, I think they were building a tiny tank out of discarded sardine cans and fireworks.

The Internet just makes things several times worse. I considered calling an exterminator, and somehow the cockroaches caught wind of this, and now I’ve got 4chan spam-bombing me 24/7 out of protest. I never want to see another crude MS paint drawing of me burning in effigy again.

I love the image of Jim “[sitting] in his luxury country cottage, banging away on a keyboard that’s not plugged into anything, while barking orders at his staff to build him ever-more improbable robots.”

You’re getting self-indulgent to the point of wasting my time. This isn’t funny nor interesting – nor was the Valve email worth posting, and the Minecraft running joke was irritating from the start. Don’t let RPS fuck up, darlings – I rather like the place.

It’s just getting a bit creepy now. Less journalism, more mad, bad jokes and running themes and trollfood.